Best Sentence XIV

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Tony Blankley, who used to serve as press secretary to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, delivers a huge payoff after a paragraph of teasing. It’s priceless. And his message is one for our times, and couldn’t possibly be more important.

The Senate is emitting an embarrassing level of emotional policy twitching on the topic of Iraq. Sen. Harry Reid can’t take the war anymore. He “knows” it is lost. Sen. Olympia Snowe has just about had it with the Iraqi government. If they don’t meet her benchmarks — that’s it. Sen. Mitch McConnell thinks “that the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it.” Who authored that wall graffiti, he doesn’t say. After talking with grieving family members of one of our fallen warriors, Sen. Pete Domenici “wants a new strategy for Iraq.”

I haven’t seen such uncritical thinking since I hid under my bedsheets to get away from the monsters back when I was 3 years old. [emphasis mine]

Nailed it shut, Mr. Blankley. If I traveled back in time to the era of World War II, I’m really not sure how I would explain this. I think emotionally the families who lost good men, would be able to understand it just fine: Coffins came home, and now people want to end the war. They’d understand the wanting just great. The thinking, the values, the noodling-it-out…they wouldn’t be able to get it, I don’t think. They’d be horrified.

I’d have to explain it this way: “In 2007, people don’t think the military exists to defend the nation. They think it’s there to provide free educational benefits. Coffins coming home…far fewer than you people have seen in your time…represent an unmistakable sign that the military has been misused.”

Oh and I’d have to throw in this gem too: Any adult males like me, who haven’t served, but nevertheless want to express our respect toward those who have and those who do…are called “chickenhawks.” All we have to do to earn this, is note that someone else has done something more important than the things we’ve done. That’s all. It’s a derogatory term designed to get us to shut up, while people who hold nothing but contempt for the armed forces are able to express themselves freely.